Bright Woods

In the mid afternoon Saturday walked in via the NW gate. Time to go slow and explore..see what the cold and snow of the past fortnight have done. Woods were full of light, and warm. It felt like the first day of spring temperatures.. in the 60's.

By the East Pond a woodpecker drilled several (7-8) holes in a large living grapevine. Each hole is the size of an acorn. I wonder if grapevine wounds are particularly likely to bleed sugary sap and attract insects for the bird.

The East Pond still 95% frozen but all the perimeter has melted. The southern third of the West Pond was frozen.

Heard a kingfisher in the SW Woods and a flicker. Somebody ate a female cardinal. The feathers had fallen from a broken hackberry branch across the trail SE of the bird feeder. At the base of the largest old (oak?) snag just NW of the Pound.. there lay a freshly dead junco..still soft and flexible. The cold and lack of food may have killed it and others..

Fresh spring onions were up 3 inches and longer by the ditch crossing W of the Elm Bridge.
The early new reddish multiflora rose leaves beginning to flush.

Under old rotten log near Elm Bridge a two inch centipede crawled slowly into the cold wood.. under same log, two hibernating snails; and a quarter-sized patch of gold slime mold sporulating. Some new gossamer in the Woods with warm temp.. amazing spiders!.. and one green bottle blow fly out at fence corner.

Water flowing slowly to Elm Bridge and beyond.. the ragweed delta not flooded; but water held in channels there slowly moving.

Ligustrum privet leaves browsed heavily on some plants.. must be survival food in snow. Some rose hips left.. not many. Odd that hackberry berries are all suddenly coming down now after the melting snow especially along the south boundary.. maybe evolved strategy as starvation/ survival food for dispersers after cold or snow when all else is gone?? Some Euonymous leaves look to have died in the cold - the most exposed.. while those slightly more sheltered below are still green.
Idea: measure the aerenchyma butt swell of green ash at ground level vs circumference at 1 meter.. as indicator of frequency of flooding.. should increase to a maximum and then percentage tree mortality should increase where flooding is more common than trees can handle.

No evidence of dog or dog tracks. Four or five deer moving north from the South Boundary across the Dune.

Disturbances in the Woods: Dec. 2000 big pecans, elms and other trees west of the wash between Burr Oak Bridge and Island Crossing down in ice storm.
Dec 2007 ice storm hit all of Norman heavily.